How distinct the least important words of this conversation have remained in my memory with their gay or sad, sentimental or bantering, disabused or tender intonation! I could continue to note down pages and pages of details without weariness. It seems to me, while writing this upon cold mute paper, that the clock has gone backwards and it is once more the time when the conversation ended, too soon for my liking, and we reached the house in the Rue de la Barouillére. I can see myself saying good-bye to Camille before the massive door which a sleepy porter was very slow in opening. I think I can hear the sound of the bell and feel the warmth of her little feverish hand in mine, while I wished her good-bye and she appeared to me, in the light of the moon, like an adorable phantom ever disappearing. She half closes her fine eyes which were heavy with sleep, she bows her head with a smile, she puts her finger to her mouth with a malicious gesture, to remind me to be discreet over the confidences she had entrusted to me. Her little head and long cloak disappeared in the darkness and the door closed with a dull sound.
Unconsciously I listened for a moment longer. I stretched out my hand to clasp hers and felt instead a metal object, the lamp which was left for her every evening. A match was struck, a hasty step sounded, and another door, the staircase door, closed. That was all, so I went towards home in the pale moonlight along streets deserted except for a few stray cats and dogs, a few policemen on their beats, a belated cab, and a group of young artists just leaving a café in the Boulevard Saint Michel, which were the only things which testified to the existence of life in the great sleeping mansions, dark convents, the little houses with a single jet of gas burning, and the black, sinister-looking hospitals. This quarter is really one of the suburbs of Paris, though it is so near the densely populated Boulevards, just as Camille’s peaceful life with her mother is so near her passionate stage life.
It had only taken us three quarters of an hour to return from the theatre, though our pace was unequal, sometimes slow and sometimes rapid, as if we were hastening over our confidences. It took me less time to reach the little house on the Boulevard des Invalides where I live, though I wandered aimlessly in this deserted part overwhelmed by a trouble for which I could scarcely blame myself. That sudden burning of the inner being, that handling and interminable repetition of phrases which one has just heard, that obsession of thought at the same time pleasing and terrifying, that occupation as if by force by a creature to whom one was the previous evening and the same day a perfect stranger—these are the signs which denote the fatal fever, malaria of the soul, which takes longer to cure than other and more dangerous maladies.
“A good night’s sleep,” I said to myself, “and to-morrow these foolish ideas will be gone; besides she is a friend’s mistress. I know myself. The thought of their caresses simply would prevent me from becoming amorous of her, if I desired to. But I shall not have this desire. She has moved me this evening in her real life as she moved me at the theatre, as she would have moved me in a novel. But that is pure imagination. To-morrow I shall not think of her, and if I think of her, I shall not see her nor Molan again. That is all.”
Pure imagination is an expression easily used. But is there not a profound and very sensible point by which this imagination touches our heart, is our heart in fact? When a woman’s grace has wounded this point, we always discover motives why we should not remain faithful to the prudent programme of not seeing her again. The fact was, I began by not having the good night’s sleep I promised myself, and when I awakened from my morning doze I thought of Camille Favier with as much troubled interest as I had done the evening before. I at once found a pretext for breaking my good resolution not to see either her or Molan again. Had I not promised Jacques to inform him as to the success or otherwise of his scheme? All the same, it was not without remorse that about ten o’clock I set out to fulfil my strange mission.
I had forgotten the previous evening that I had a model coming at ten. A girl called Malvina came to pose for my never-ending “Psyché pardonnée.” When I sent her away I heard the little inner voice, of which on the previous evening Camille had prettily spoken, whisper: “Coward! Coward!” But even without the little voice, did not the presence of this creature demonstrate to me the absurdity of my incipient sentiment? Malvina had, too, like Camille, the ideal head for the primitive Madonna, and she was pleasure personified. Her mouth, which looked so beautiful in its silent smile, only opened to retail obscenity. What a good plan it is never to believe in the bewitching charm of a face! Fate has warnings like this for us which we disregard with an obscure feeling of the irreparable. After Malvina had gone I looked round my studio, at the unfinished canvas, my colour box, my palette, and I went out pursued by their mute reproach. Why did I not listen!
To reach the Rue Delaborde, where Jacques Molan lived, I had fortunately to traverse a nice part of Paris, of the sort to distract my attention. I know it so well from making numerous studies of it when I was preoccupied, as the critics say when they are looking on our pictures for an opportunity to theorize and be modern. That is finished as far as I am concerned. It has profited me all the same; for if I no longer think a picture ought to represent freaks of light without significance, or bodies of human life without essential value, I have kept for these studies a keener taste, a more refined sense of certain landscapes, those of the Seine, for example, the Tuileries, and the Place de la Concorde. I love them especially in their morning tints which give them a tender freshness, distinct water-colour transparencies, with a thrill of alert activity. That morning, though my nerves were still quivering with the intoxication of my new-born passion, the water of the river seemed to me fresher than ever; the grey-blue of the sky more delicate above the leafless trees; the water of the fountains more sparkling with a whiter and more noisy foam. My over-excited being more readily appreciated the charm of the trees, houses, and flowing water. I unconsciously forgot my wise resolution and my remorse at leaving my work, to picture to myself the renewal of the soul which a liaison such as the one satiated Jacques Molan held so cheaply would instil into me. Then the irresistible demon of irony took possession of me.
“Yes,” I actually or almost said to myself, “what a dream it would be to be loved by a woman like Camille! Just free enough to give long hours to her lover and not free enough to absorb his time; enough of an artist to understand the most delicate and subtle shades of impression; natural enough to be amused at the Bohemian caprices, which are so savoury when they are not accompanied by misery; enthusiastic enough for a constant encouragement to work to emanate from her, and too spontaneous, too sincere to ever drive you to that slavery to success, which is the fatal influence of so many mistresses and wives. And then what an adorable lover she would be! Was it a rare tint of soul, which the story she told me yesterday had, and was it different from the ones in the heads of her little friends? A rich protector and much advertisement is the usual ideal of such girls! The only actress who thinks differently must needs meet with Molan, the cold machine for producing prolific copy. But what is the use of my understanding and appreciating her like this, when I am on my way to contribute to the closeness of their intimacy? What absurd chance made me meet Jacques yesterday evening? That must happen to me: it is the symbol of our whole lives, his and mine. I am, or rather am ready to be, the man who really loves; he is the lover. I have the sensibility of a real artist, while he achieves works and reaps the glory of them. Meanwhile I am wasting a very clear morning and my picture is at a standstill. Ah, I shall soon be back and I will send for Malvina. I will work all the afternoon, I will make up for lost time. Directly my commission is executed I will hurry away. I am rather curious to see how the animal is lodged. He must be making just now from 80,000 to 100,000 francs a year, and it is a great change from his former position.”
It was a long time since I had called upon my old friend. While the lift-man whisked me up to the second floor, where he lived, of a large new house with bow windows of coloured glass, I recalled the numerous quarters where I had known this author, who was such a clever administrator of his wealth and talents, and ran over in my mind his rapid advance along the highway of Parisan glory. First of all on leaving college he had a little furnished room in the Rue Monsieur le Prince. A portrait of Baudelaire by Félicien Rops and a few bad medallions by David constituted the personal furniture of this retreat. The fastidious arrangement of the books, papers and pens on the table already testified to the worker’s strong will.
Jacques’ only resource then was a small income of 150 francs a month allowed him by his only relative, an old grandmother, who lived in the Provinces, and to whom he behaved like a grateful grandson. I saw him weep real tears when she died, and then he put her into a book. Strange to say, that was the only one of his books which was really bad. Could it be that talent of writing is only nourished by imaginative sensibility, which, to be realized, has need of expression, whereas real sensibility exhausts itself and comes to an end through its own reality? Happily for him, in the early years of his literary life he only depicted sentiments which he had not. His first volume, so elegant and yet so brutal, was, strange to say, scrawled in this Latin Quarter garret. His joining the staff of a Boulevard paper and a change of residence showed that the writer did not intend to vegetate in the same narrow circle. He took rooms in the Rue de Bellechasse still on the left bank of the river, but now very close to the right bank. The portrait of Baudelaire still remained, to proclaim his fidelity to his early artistic convictions; but now it was framed in velvet and hung upon red Adrianople tapestry, which gave to this retreat an air of a padded shelter. This counter-balanced the lack of artistic character in the furniture, which was on the hire system and very solid and commonplace, without any other pretension than the quality of its old oak. The noted trader in literary wares, which Molan was, betrayed himself by his choice of durable furniture and a well made desk never likely to need repair. His success still increased, and the period of the little house at Passy came, though directly afterwards the house became unsuitable.